When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
How often have we all heard that quote? It is a great quote unless you are in need of it. Have you ever wanted something so badly that you felt you would just keep trying until it killed you?
I am sure many of you can relate. I am not talking life or death at the moment but we all have our hopes and dreams that we keep shooting for. For me, I have been trying to launch this site for years, something in the universe just didn’t seem to want it to come full circle. When I look back at all the obstacles it makes me cry and then laugh for I have decided God is really just testing me to see how much I really want this.
My dream has been to help women that have escaped domestic violence by offering advice and resources to help them move beyond a painful past and create a life they want.
I agree that it helps to get advice from someone who was walked in your shoes and I have been giving advice long before I realized it, some sought after some maybe not.
Anyway, back to the point, around 5 years ago I created a website under my name, something happened when it was being moved to another server by my host and I lost everything, tons of blog posts around 1000 followers (no, I never backed it up!)
Well, it took a good year or more for me to even want to try again but I was always thinking about it so I started again, the site was then launched maybe a year later and had around 500 follower’s and the new place I was hosting through had a billing issue with the place I bought from, long story, not only did I lose my site but I lost my domain name, rebeccaburns.com, scammers saw the opportunity and bought my name, I would soon find out that my name was being sold for over $700.00 which was insane considering I had owned it for more than 10 years at a cost of maybe $10.00 a year.
I think losing my domain name was worse than losing all my content and followers, as a writer I often read that it was smart to own your name so I obtained it more than ten years ago. So, this one really stung, yes I had some of the emails and posts backed up this time, but not all, why, I have no idea, just a glutton for punishment.
It took a good year or more for me to even consider trying to start this site again, I was still writing on my other blog but it was not on the topics I wanted for this site. I was really stuck and afraid to give 100% of my heart and time to starting all over. I struggled for a very long time wondering if this was the universe telling me that I should move on, what I had to say didn’t matter and basically, who the hell are you to think you can create this website?
Well, obviously, the deep desire never left me so I started again. My guy found me an amazing new template to use and I loved it, I decided, it was fate that I changed the format and look which is why the other sites had issues.
I worked really hard for months writing new posts and getting the site to look the way that I wanted it to. I swear to you, I was ready to launch it the next morning when something in the toolbar wouldn’t work.
I didn’t think much about it as it seemed like a minor error, I was not able to see the post preview but the content was still there. No joke, I will give you one guess, the new template we purchased had a major bug and crashed and along with it my dream. My guy tried everything he could think of to fix the issue and was finally told by tech support something may have been corrupted in the Joomla site.
He was heartbroken to have to tell me that once again, while posts were backed up and we had not yet launched so there was no impact to subscribers, that everything was once again lost.
I could tell he didn’t want to tell me the bad news and God Bless him he still kept assuring me he may be able to fix the issue but I was actually very calm after it all set in. I wasn’t at an upset as I had been in the past and just seemed to accept it in some way. I didn’t think of this is not what God has planned for me or I suck, I just had no feeling about it, you realize you are numb to it.
I did not think about the site for some time and stopped writing. Soon, the pain of not writing was daily so I started to do what I love most and just started writing again. I let the posts add up and just kept at it. Together my guy and I created a really nice brand for the site and I started to learn about Pinterest. Earlier I had set up a Facebook site which may have brought you here today and I just kept doing what I loved, writing.
Yes, we tried again (or you would not be here now) but this time, we had a really good program in place that created a backup of everything daily (I know, why didn’t we do that before, though we did it was not working). I had been creating boards on Pinterest and learning how to use that tool to get you here. Day by day I was falling in love with this process again. I will be honest, along the way I had moments of asking God, is this really what I should be spending my time on? Then one night, after praying to God for a sign to let me know yes, you are on the right path Rebecca I said my prayers and went to bed.
The site was just a short time from launch and the next morning when I woke up, my guy told me that he had paid the $700.00 or so dollars to buy me back my domain name or RebeccaBurns.com. I looked at him like, are you nuts, we never should have had to pay to get my name back. He said that he believed in what I wanted to do so much and had seen how hard I had worked to suck it up and make this happen again that he felt he just had to do this. I shared with him that I had begged God for a sign as I stood in front of him all giddy.
This was the sign I had been looking for!
If you are reading this, I was finally able to make this dream come true. I know this was not a major struggle for some reading and may not even compare to an obstacle you are dealing with but for me, this was that deep in the bone desire to bring this site to life. My hope in sharing this is that you keep doing the little things to get you closer to your dreams, don’t give up, while you may have crappy days, if you are still thinking about going after something, you owe it to yourself.
What dream have you been working on? Have you come close to giving up and kept going? Share that with us, my hope is that hearing my dream will inspire another.
I thank God for keeping this fire burning inside me all these years. I have grown as a writer, coach, and woman.
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